Grammar theory and language comparison
In grammatical theory, linguists study the human language system to find out what abstract cognitive patterns and structures underlie all languages in the world, so that all humans are capable of acquiring any language as their mother tongue, regardless of their origin at birth. In order to discover these general patterns of human language, it is particularly important to compare languages within a language family and beyond. In a narrow sense, grammar refers to the syntax and morphology of language (i.e. how linguistic signs of varying complexity are combined); in a broad sense, grammar stands for a theory of language in general.
Svitlana Antonyuk (Institute for German Studies; Institute for Slavic Studies)
- Syntax
- Prosody-Syntax-Semantics Interface
- Quantification of natural language
- Argument structure
- Language contact
- Word order and information structure
- Experimental Syntax
- East Slavic languages
Boban Arsenijević (Institute for Slavic Studies)
- Word formation
- Syncretism and allomorphy
- Aspect
- subordinate clauses
- Congruence
Yanis da Cunha (Institute for Romance Studies):
- construction alternation
- gender and animacy
- long-distance dependencies
Steffen Heidinger (Institute for Romance Studies):
- Pronouns
- Valence alternations
- Secondary predication
Sabine Heinemann (Institute for Romance Studies):
(Diachronic) Verbal morphology
Martin Hummel (Institute for Romance Studies):
- Adverbs in the Romania
- Subjunctive
Gianina Iordachioaia (Institute for Linguistics):
- Word formation
- argument structure
- aspect
- negation
Gunther Kaltenböck (Institute for English Studies):
- Discourse Grammar and Thetical Grammar
- Construction Grammar
- Cognitive Grammar
Veronika Mattes (Institute for Linguistics):
- Derivational morphology
- Morphology-Lexicon Interface
- Reduplication
Aleksandra Milosavljević (Institute for Slavic Studies):
- Pronouns and reflexives
- noun phrase
- Sentences
- Verbs (argument structure and valency)
Stefan Milosavljević (Institute for Slavic Studies):
- Verbal aspect
- Verbal morphology
- Multifunctionality in morphology
- Anaphors and pronouns
- Subject-verb agreement
- morpho-syntactic reduplication
- complementation
Ozan Mustafa (Institute for English Studies):
- Functional Discourse Grammar
- Construction Grammar
Martina Rossi (Institute for Romance Studies):
- Prepositional adverbs
- Pronouns
Daria Seres (Institute for Slavic Studies):
- Nominal phrase
- Grammaticalisation
- aspect
- cross-linguistic semantics
- Slavic, Romance and Germanic languages
Vesela Simeonova (Institute for Slavic Studies):
- evidentiality
- mirativity
- modality
- embedded clauses
- tense
- counterfactuality
- epistemic future
- impoliteness
- Balkan
- Turkic
- syntax semantics pragmatics interfaces
Marko Simonovic (Institute for Slavic Studies):
- Morphology
- Phonology-Syntax-Interface
- exponence
- language contact
- syncretism
- allomorphy
- Aspect
- argument structure
Jelena Stojkovic (Institute for Slavic Studies):
- Phonology
- allomorphy
- exponence
- reduplication
- language games
- Optimality theory
- phonological typology
- grammatical domain interaction
- subject-verb agreement
Elnora ten Wolde (Institute for English Studies):
- Functional Discourse Grammar
- Construction Grammar
- Cognitive Grammar
Joeri Vinke (Institute for Slavic Studies):
- Syntax
- Pronouns
- Reflexive
- intensifiers
- Adpositional syntax
- Differential object marking
Ralf Vollmann (Institute for Linguistics):
- Case marking
- complex clauses
- Sino-Tibetan typology
Anna Volodina (Institute for Linguistics):
- Connectors of German
- descriptive syntax of German
- Genus and gender
Elnora ten Wolde (Institute for English Studies):
- Functional Discourse Grammar
- Construction Grammar
- Cognitive Grammar
Jelena Živojinović (Institute for Slavic Studies):
- Language contact
- non-finite verb forms
- aspect
- clitics
- grammaticalisation
- diachrony
- Minority languages/endangered languages